Buyers are in firm control of the pair, as the soft dollar trade continues into trading today

The USD starts the week where it left off on Friday, and it's getting beaten up across the board again. This time, with the AUD, NZD, and JPY playing a bit of catch up.

AUD leads the way among the major bloc, and despite AUD/USD opening with a bit of a gap down this morning it's been on a relentless run to the upside in today's trading so far.

Buyers remain firmly in control of the pair at this point, and a test of the resistance levels sitting between the 76.4 retracement level at 0.7978 and the 0.8000 level seems inevitable.

While the dollar got a temporary boost from retail sales and inflation numbers on Friday, that doesn't appear to be enough to overturn the market sentiment to sell the dollar at any given opportunity. Can you imagine what would happen when economic data turns sour or if growth starts to slow down in the US? The backlash would be massive, if we're already seeing such weakness when data points are positive.

The aussie is still riding from the euphoria of recent positive economic data points (last week's retail sales and building approvals data), and it is likely this theme will continue until we hear something from the RBA on their view towards rate hikes.

Markets believe that the RBA will only start moving some time in the second half of this year, and no clear-cut timing has been established yet, so that will ultimately depend on the RBA's communication.

The RBA will only meet for the first time this year on 6 February - but before that we will have several key data points for the AUD:

18 January - December employment change & unemployment rate

18 January - China GDP figures

31 January - Q4 2017 CPI figures

6 February - December retail sales data*

6 February - December trade balance data*

*prior to RBA meeting

As long as economic data continues to surprise on the upside, traders will continue to price in a quicker move by the RBA and that will continue to be AUD-supportive for the time being.